NEW Startup S.H.I.T. *[Strategies, Hypotheses, Ideas, Theories]

“STATUS QUO BIAS” (And the Definition of Insanity?!)

STATUS QUO BIAS — A cognitive bias that explains our preference for familiarity… to resist change and prefer the current state of affairs[definition from PsychologyToday.com]

Yes, of course “Startups Are Hard” — BUT, there are things we can do to dramatically improve the current success/fail rates if we start thinking (and re-thinking?)more strategically and identifying / addressing the most common Problems & Pitfalls… …Because simply following the same path and repeating the same approach of countless failed Startups/Founders before you (and yet somehow hoping for different/better results!?) sounds pretty close to Einstein’s(?) definition of INSANITY… …And, yet, if we take a macro view of the Startup Community — it is a dumbfounding realization that we’re seeing today’s Startups/Founders failing at the exact same rate (and for many/most of the exact same reasons!) as Startups/Founders 5 years ago! (which failed at the same rate, for the same reasons, as Startups/Founders 10 years ago!) … This success/fail rate is NOT some “natural law” of entrepreneurship! — Rather, it’s Einstein’s aforementioned definition of INSANITY on full display! — And we’re doing nothing (not enough) to break the cycle! #ItsGroundHogDay #StatusQuoBias

UNDERLYING PREMISES / PROBLEMS: 1a) Most people have a very skewed perception of how many startups/entrepreneurs are struggling/failing — AND what the most common causes are… BECAUSE:1b) Startups will succeed loudly/publicly and will fail silently/privately — particularly Early Stage / Idea Stage. THEREFORE: 1c) It becomes very difficult to improve a situation when most people don’t even realize the severity of the situation or just how repetitive and predictable the underlying causes are! (For some reason, after observing it over and over again over the years, I’ve become fascinated by the topic!)

ONE WAY TO LOOK AT IT:

“Yeah, that sucks… But startups are HARD, so those mistakes/pitfalls/failures are destined to keep happening to new entrepreneurs each year. That’s just how it is.”

OR, PERHAPS…

…we could maybe try to identify some of the most Persistently Pervasive PROBLEMS and Precariously Prominent PITFALLS(#AlliterationAddiction) and maybe implement some improvement initiatives (within existing startup communities?) that maybe try to educate/warn aspiring entrepreneurs (the ones who are humble enough / open-minded enough to listen!) about the hazards ahead — or the proverbial piano that’s about to fall on their head — rather than just standing by and watching them walk into the inevitable disasters we‘ve seen happen countless times before…?!?

Yes, of course we all like to say:

“I learned more from my failures than I did from my successes”

“It’s not about how many times you get knocked down, it’s how many times you get back up”

“Live and learn… Nobody said it would be easy… Hardship helps us grow… It’s always darkest before the dawn… blah blah blah”

But, let’s be honest… that’s some “HAPPY-HORSESHIT HINDSIGHT!”

If you were given a time machine and the ability to learn all those same lessons WITHOUT the failures and WITHOUT the avoidable mistakes and WITHOUT repeatedly getting knocked down — because those who had “been there, done that” were willing to guide you based on a community’s collection/analysis of enough first-hand experiences, second-hand observations, and retrospective realizations to see all the same patterns (all the same Mistakes & Missteps, all the same Problems & Pitfalls) experienced by new entrepreneurs year after year after year — Wouldn’t the vast majority of us choose to just learn all those lessons WITHOUT the failures, mistakes, knockdowns, and distress?!?

“If only I had known then what I know now…”

I’ve said that…And many of YOU have said that... [And these guys apparently wrote a song about it…]

Click PLAY. If I did this write, it should start right at the chorus (2:44)

…and I GUARANTEE that, one day in the future, many young entrepreneurs of today and tomorrow will also be saying “If only I had known then what I know now…”

SPOILER ALERT: To the more experienced entrepreneurs out there (particularly the more self-aware, insightful, analytical entrepreneurs), many of us DO currently know many of the things that these young entrepreneurs will one day be lamenting “If only I had known then…”

Or is failure really THAT MUCH a “rite of passage” that the more experienced, most insightful members of the startup community should literally hold back our knowledge/experience/wisdom to force young entrepreneurs to learn it the hard way on their own?!? Repeating MANY of the same mistakes that we’ve seen made by countless entrepreneurs before them?!?

IN CONCLUSION…

It will likely be a bit disorganized initially, but please contact us here if you might be interested in working with us on the testing and implementation of some new STARTUP S.H.I.T. [Strategies, Hypotheses, Ideas, Theories] — …experienced entrepreneurs who share any of our thoughts? …young/aspiring entrepreneurs looking to learn? …and anyone/everyone in between – even those may have never even thought of themselves as an entrepreneur before!

P.S.

And we can discuss/debate all of the above… OR, we can just start building a network of “Starter Startups” BASED ON all the *S.H.I.T. above!*[Strategies, Hypotheses, Ideas, Theories]

P.P.S.

Feel free to stop reading here — maybe go check out www.ReThinkingWhatever.com and submit your email address to potentially join us?? In the meantime, I spent the time writing up the ridiculous analogy below, so I might as well include it:

ANALOGY, PART 1:

“Oh, no! You got hit by a car?!? Was it perhaps a silver 2015 BMW X3…? that ran a red light at the corner of Piedmont and Peachtree…?? on a Tuesday, around 9:07am…???”

— Wow! Yes, that’s exactly right! How did you know that?!?

“…Yeah, no surprise there — we’ve been seeing that exact same thing happen just like that for years!! It’s a shame nobody tried to warn you. Oh well. Sorry to hear it happened to you too. Good luck with those broken legs!”

vs. ANALOGY, PART 2:

“Oh, no! You’re shutting down your startup?!? Is it perhaps because your premises and projections were based on overly-optimistic assumptions that were theoretically possible but not statistically probable…?? And/or because you spent too much time and money on branding and social media and networking and preparing for some hypothetical future iteration of your business (that, objectively, you only had a ~1% chance of ever getting to anyway) so you ran out of money before you even really got to launch and market a fully-functional MVP, after under-estimating how much time and money that development process would actually take…???”

— Wow! Yes, thats exactly right! How did you know that?!?

“…Yeah, no surprise there — we’ve been seeing that exact same thing happen just like that for years! It’s a shame nobody tried to warn you. Oh well. Sorry to hear it happened to you too. Good luck with those broken legs!” — *[or whatever the corresponding consequence would be to effectively complete the analogy]